He was a
soldier, obeying the orders of his superiors, for which they and they
only were responsible. That their orders matched with his feelings,
religious as well as political, for Claverhouse was as thorough in his
devotion to the Church as he was in his devotion to the Crown, mattered
nothing. The whole question was to him one of military obedience. Sorely
as he may have chafed at the order, he halted his troopers on the banks
of the Clyde when Monmouth's trumpets sounded the recall, with the same
readiness and composure that he showed in leading them to the charge
down the slopes of Drumclog; and he would have led them against his
brothers-in-arms Ross or James Douglas, had they turned rebels, as
straightly and keenly as he led them against Hamilton and Burley. At the
same time both his letters and his actions show that he did his best to
discriminate between the ringleaders and the crowd: between the brawling
demagogues or the meddlesome priests and the honest ignorant peasants,
whose only crime was that they wished to worship God after a fashion the
Government chose to discountenance. It is not necessary to assume that
he was moved thereto by any softness of heart: common-sense, and a
sense, too, of justice, would suffice to show him where to strike. And
it will hereafter be seen that, where his commission was large enough,
he more than once exercised a discretion not entirely to the taste of
the more thorough-going zealots of the Edinburgh Council-board.
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